I understand and agree.  Referring to my earlier email when I stated implicit, 
it was my understanding that the specific PAN ID was stateful, i.e. the 
receiving device somehow knew as to what PAN ID the transmitting device was 
associated.  Given that the PAN ID was understood, the receiving device could 
then also have known what extended address was associated with the short 
address.

Pat

Pat Kinney
Kinney Consulting LLC
IEEE 802.15 WG vice chair, SC chair
ISA100 co-chair, ISA100.20 chair
O: +1.847.960.3715
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>


On 9, Oct2017, at 9:17, Tero Kivinen <[email protected]> wrote:

[email protected] writes:
> Agreed, the security mechanism provides an implicit PAN ID.  But, as to your
> first point, putting the PAN ID into the header allows the receiving device to
> better manage energy.

If security is used, for non-TSCH modes you always need to know the
extended address of the sender, even if it is using short address when
sending the frame. The nonce for non-TSCH mode is generated using
extended address (see section 9.3.2.1 of 802.15.4-2015). This is
mandatory as the nonce needs to be tied to the sender device, as frame
number is tied to the sender device.

For the TSCH mode where ASN is used it is allowed to use short address
to generate the nonce, but to be able to generate the nonce the
recipient needs to know the PAN ID as PAN ID is part of the nonce
generation when using short addresses in nonce (see section 9.3.2.2 of
802.15.4-2015).

So it would be possible to make 802.15.4 lookalike protocol where PAN
ID would be completely omitted, when using TSCH mode, and still use
the short address in the nonce generation, but then the recipient
needs to know somehow which PAN ID was used when sender generated the
frame. I.e., if sender uses PAN ID of 0x1234 when generating the
nonce, but do not transmit it, then recipient either needs to try all
possible PAN IDs and try to decrypt the frame using all of them, or it
must have prior configuration telling the PAN ID.

Because of these issues, the PAN ID cannot be completely omitted in
802.15.4 frames when using short addresses.

When using extended addresses there is no issue with that, as PAN ID
is not used when generating the nonce, thus when using extended
addresses there is a way to completely omit the PAN ID.
-- 
[email protected]

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